CHAPTER X
RALPH ALLEN
1720-1764
There was one who realised not less fully than the postmasters-general themselves the difficulties by which they were beset. He knew well, even better than they, how letters were being kept out of the post and transmitted clandestinely, and how even on letters which fell into the post the postage was being intercepted. But while the postmasters-general regarded the evil as incurable, he thought that it might at all events be mitigated. This was Ralph Allen, the postmaster of Bath. Allen's experience in postal matters was probably unrivalled. He had, it might almost be said, been cradled and nursed in the Post Office. The son of an innkeeper at St. Blaise, he had, at eleven years of age, been placed under the care of his grandmother, who, on the post road being diverted from South to Mid-Cornwall, was appointed postmistress of St. Columb. Here the regularity and neatness with which the lad kept the accounts gained for him the approval of the district surveyor when on a tour of inspection; and shortly afterwards, probably through the surveyor's influence, he obtained a situation in the Post Office at Bath. It is said that while in this situation, intelligence having reached him that a waggon-load of arms was on its way from the West for the use of the disaffected, he placed himself in communication with General Wade, who was then quartered at Bath with his troops, and that it was by this service that he first brought himself into notice; but be that as it may, it is certain that when Quash the old postmaster died, Allen was appointed in Quash's room.
In 1719 Allen offered to take in farm the bye and cross-post letters, giving as rent half as much again as these letters had ever produced. It was a bold offer, and, coming as it did from a young man only twenty-six years of age, and presumably without capital, not one to be accepted precipitately. Allen proceeded to London and had frequent interviews with the postmasters-general. The earnestness of his convictions and the modest assurance with which he expressed them invited confidence, and on the 12th of April 1720 a contract was signed, the conditions of which were to come into operation on the Midsummer Day following.
Much as we desire to avoid the employment of technical terms, it is necessary here to explain that letters, exclusive of those passing through the penny post, were technically divided into four classes—London letters, country letters, bye or way letters, and cross-post letters. For purposes of illustration we will take Bath, the city in which Allen resided. A letter between Bath and London would be a London letter, and a letter from one part of the country to another which in course of transit passed through London would be a country letter. A bye or way letter would be a letter passing between any two towns on the Bath road and stopping short of London—as, for instance, between Bath and Hungerford, between Hungerford and Newbury, between Newbury and Reading, and so on; while a cross-post letter would be a letter crossing from the Bath road to some other—as, for instance, a letter between Bath and Oxford. It was only with the last two classes of letters that Allen had to do. The London and country letters were outside the sphere of his operations.
On the bye and cross-post letters the postage for the year 1719 had amounted to £4000. Allen was to give £6000 a year; and in consideration of this rent he was for a period of seven years to receive the whole of the revenue which these letters should produce. Some letters indeed were excepted, namely Scotch letters, Irish letters, packet letters, "all Parliament men's letters during the privilege of Parliament," and such letters as "usually goe free," that is, letters for the High Officers of State or, as we should now say, letters on His Majesty's service. No post under Allen's control, whether a new or an old one, was to go less than three times a week; and the mails were to be carried at a speed of not less than five miles an hour. He was also to keep in readiness "a sufficient number of good and able horses with convenient furniture," not only for the mails but for expresses and for the use of travellers. One condition of the contract may seem a little hard. Allen's own officers were to be appointed and their salaries to be fixed by the postmasters-general, and to these officers he was to give no instructions which had not first been submitted for the postmaster-generals' approval.
Allen by his sterling qualities had won the confidence of his fellow-townsmen at Bath, and there can be little doubt that they now gave him practical proof of the estimation in which he was held. It is difficult to understand how else he can have raised the funds necessary for the purposes of his undertaking. In the very first quarter, between the 24th of June and the 29th of September 1720, he expended in what may be called his plant as much as £1500, and made himself responsible for salaries to the amount of £3000 a year. But heavy as the expenses were, the receipts bore a most gratifying proportion. From the bye and cross-post letters the postmasters-general had received, at the highest, £4000 a year. Allen in his first quarter received £2946. These first-fruits, while viewed by Allen with equanimity, threw the postmasters-general into transports of delight, such delight as men feel when they find themselves to have been true prophets. "See," they said in a letter to the Treasury dated the 10th of November, "how right we were. We told you that the greater part of the postage on these letters was going into the pockets of the postmasters, and that to accept Mr. Allen's proposal was the only way to check the malversation." But the promise of the first quarter was not fulfilled. The system of check and countercheck on which Allen relied for the success of his plan depended largely, as the postmasters were not slow to discover, on their own co-operation; and this they refused to give.
Nor can we feel surprise that it should have been so. Of the postmasters some received no salary at all, while others received the merest pittance. It could not in reason be expected that they would give their services gratuitously or, as the postmasters-general were pleased to think, in return for the copy of a newspaper once a week. Postmasters, like other men, must live, and they no doubt reasoned that, as the State did not pay them, they were forced to pay themselves. It must also be remembered that the offence of intercepting postage, heinous as it would now be considered, may in those days have been regarded in a somewhat different light. Some postmasters, as remuneration for their services, were authorised to withhold a certain proportion of the postage; and numerous were the complaints that in this particular the liberty accorded to some was not extended to others. It is probable, therefore, that many a postmaster, when accounting for less postage than he had actually received, excused himself on the plea that he was only doing without authority that for which authority had been given to others, and which should not in his judgment have been denied to himself.
But whatever apologies they may have found for their conduct, the fact remains that Allen's contract had been only a few months in operation before the postmasters resumed their old practices, and, seeing clearly enough that his plan when once fairly floated would deprive them of a profitable source of income, they not only withheld all co-operation but obstructed him by every means in their power. To such an extent indeed was this obstruction carried that at the end of three years Allen, far from realising the promise of the first quarter, found himself a loser to the amount of £270. Although things now began to improve, the improvement was slow, and in June 1727, when the contract expired, Allen had established his plan completely on only four out of the six main roads of the kingdom. On the Yarmouth road he had established it only partially, and on the Kent road not at all.